


bearing flowers and two hands

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bullying, Child Abuse, Denial, Eating Disorders, Fat Shaming, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Lowercase, Sexual Harassment, Underage Drug Use, Unhappy Ending, Weight Issues, Young Klaus Hargreeves, because it's klaus, calorie counting, i am not feeling good today my man, triggering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 13:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20743214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: klaus is a very happy child until he isn't.alternatively, klaus only drinks vodka because beer has too many calories.





	bearing flowers and two hands

**Author's Note:**

> therapist: i think you project onto fictional characters.
> 
> me: what? i don't do that lmao.
> 
> also me:
> 
> p.s. read the tags for trigger warnings. if you think anything in there might upset you, please don't read.

four starts counting his food when he's five years, seven months and twenty-two days old. and it's something tiny and innocent, then, because he's just grabbing his almonds in his grubby little paws and dropping them out in groups of four, cause his name is four, and he finds it funny.

"four, eight..." number four doesn't know what comes after that. he's not very good at math, not like number five is. he just doesn't understand it as well. it's a thing. "five!" four calls, across the room, to where five is reading a book that's way too big for him, eyes flickering down at his bowl of almonds every once in a while, like he keeps forgetting they're there.

"what?" five's voice is nasally, and filled up with something that four doesn't know how to describe, just that he doesn't like it.

"what comes after eight?"

"nine...?" five replies, visibly confused, leaning forward from where he sits, cross-legged, on the floor.

"no, like, four after eight!"

"twelve? why are you asking?"

"i'm counting them, by four." after a moment of staring, during which five blinks several times, one after the other, one, two, three, four. number four concludes that his brother didn't get the joke. "four, like my name!"

five sighs, very heavily, and goes back to reading. four continues, undeterred by his brothers' disapproval, to count his almonds by fours, and even though he doesn't know anything past twelve, he just repeats the number until he's out of almonds.

he counts them again as he eats them. the little girl sitting next to him laughs, and five doesn't look up like he doesn't see her, even though he must. maybe he's forgetting about her just as easily as the almonds.

or maybe the open wounds on her wrist make him just as uncomfortable. four keeps telling her to wrap them up, but she just gives him a really sad look every time, so maybe it's okay.

he counts them now.

four, eight, twelve, four, eight, twelve. then, another extra one. it's bothersome.

-

klaus likes counting, even though he doesn't like math, because he likes the number four. he likes the simplicity of it, the way that every multiple of four is exactly the same every time you check in on it. like walking into your sibling's room for the second time in the middle of the night and finding them curled up in the same position as before, without a single blanket-wrinkle out of place.

klaus likes that because it makes everything feel _right,_ perfectly adjusted to the world around it. just... fitting.

he does it before he eats, at first just with peas and berries and stuff, but then it extends to everything. and he _has _to count out his spaghetti noodles, now, because something bad is going to happen if he doesn't, he just knows it. he doesn't know how or why or anything else, really, just this: that if he doesn't count his food then something will go wrong.

(he's right.)

he does it all in his head, obviously, because if dad heard him then something even worse would probably happen, and klaus can't...

he just can't, okay?

so, as he eats, he counts. his siblings never question it, because it's just something he's been doing since the beginning of time. and it doesn't matter what he's eating, because why would it?

-

when klaus is ten, he's bigger than all his siblings. it's not like he notices, or like anybody cares, it's just how things are. luther is stronger and five is smarter and klaus is bigger. it's just how the universe works.

vanya never finishes her plate and klaus always wants seconds. again, just how the world works.

one day, they're doing some running, and klaus is falling a bit behind, just a little, and he's breathing heavier than the rest of them. he finishes last, and dad turns up his nose, gives him a look of the purest scorn, and writes down, while speaking aloud, that number four needs to lose some weight.

klaus goes red from embarrassment, feeling pathetic tears form in the corners of his eyes, and wraps his arms around himself. ben comforts him later, wrapping up his (smaller, klaus can't stop thinking, smaller) arms around his brothers shaking shoulders, reassuring him that nobody besides dad cares.

the next day, klaus stands in front of the mirror for longer than he ever has, holding out his arms and pinching all the flab on them. he repeats ben's words in his head.

nobody cares.

nobody cares.

nobody cares.

nobody cares.

there, four times, now nothing can go wrong.

-

(klaus was wrong, in both ways, so maybe this counting thing doesn't have as much to it as he thought.)

-

klaus spends his thirty-minutes of free time that week watching the first part of a movie he'll probably never finish. it's called 'perfect body', and he only watches it because it's the only thing on tv. the main character is a gymnast or something, he doesn't care. the only thing he starts paying attention to is when the girl's coach tells her that she's too fat, cause hey, klaus can relate, he guesses.

she starts doing a diet and then losing weight.

huh.

-

klaus didn't what calories were, before that. which, yeah, is stupid but so is klaus, so...

he takes his next half-hour of free time to look on the computer and find out how many calories he needs to eat to lose weight. the computer says one thousand eight hundred, which- okay.

klaus goes up to mom, after that, and asks if she can give him the calories of everything that she cooks, just so he can know. she says okay, and doesn't ask when he tells her not to. he likes that about mom.

he doesn't watch the rest of 'perfect body.' why would he?

-

it works pretty well, for a little while there. it's only been a month, and at their next weigh-in, klaus has lost four pounds, which is great, because it's four, and counting by fours is good.

then, dad tells them that their training is going to be more extreme because they debut in eight months. which is-.

klaus cries in the corner of his room for ten minutes, so that should say something.

he just- he can't face people like _this_. he can't let anybody see him, not until he's...

until he's better.

he decides to cut down to one thousand six hundred calories. that's four times four hundred, which makes it good.

okay.

he'll be fine.

-

(somewhere in there, on a dare, klaus loses a bet and has to steal a bottle of rum from dad's cabinet, because allison saw it in a movie once and thinks it'd be cool. they play never have i ever.

the ghost's go away. the one with the bleeding wrists, the one that used to be nice but now just sits in the corner and cries, goes away too. he might miss her, even though he doesn't.)

-

the next weigh, and klaus is only down five pounds. which is bad; for one, it's not a multiple of four, and for two, it means that he's now one-hundred forty-five pounds, which isn't nearly low enough. personally, klaus wants to be one-hundred twenty-four pounds, which is healthy and also a very good multiple of four, in klaus' positively expert opinion.

so, he decides that going down on the calories a bit can't hurt. and neither can some pushups.

one-thousand four-hundred and forty-four is a _very_ good multiple of four.

-

"have you lost weight?" asks allison, the next time klaus is in her room, painting her nails and trying on her dresses.

"i don't know, maybe," klaus replies, vague as can be. see, the thing is that he doesn't want anyone to know he's _trying _to lose weight. he wants them to look at him and know that he has, but he also wants it to seem effortless because he knows that if anyone knew that it wasn't they would tell him that they don't care, but they do, he knows they do.

"you look like you have."

klaus beams, before replying, "oh, thanks!" and then moves on, as if it won't make him squeal and flop down on his bed later that night.

allison smiles back.

"oh, can you do a different colour on that one?"

the moment, it seems, is over. that's a shame. klaus wishes it could have lasted longer.

-

klaus has lost eight pounds at the next weigh-in, but it's just not enough, it's not. eight is a perfectly fine multiple of four, but klaus prefers twelve. twelve hundred calories a day isn't a lot less, but it should mean that he loses faster, which is good, because he wants to be at his goal weight by the time he goes out in public.

he doesn't know the exact calories of all the stuff in the fridge, though, so in the middle of the night he takes a notepad and writes down everything he can find.

the next morning, mom makes an omelette, and klaus helps her, but only so he can see exactly what goes into it. he divides the exact amount by eight, and his is way too much, so he only eats a third of it.

when mom asks, he just says he isn't hungry, even though his stomach is begging for more.

it's just a thing.

-

he gets really hungry, about a week in, and then he eats everything off of his plate at dinner, even though he doesn't really want to, and asks for seconds even when a little voice in his head screams at him to stop, and then when he lays down for bed he cries so hard his head starts to hurt.

only eight hundred calories tomorrow, he decides.

it's just a punishment.

and it's totally, completely normal.

-

next weigh-in, he's lost six pounds, which makes his mind screech with alarm bells, bouncing around inside his head and making his vision go blurry. one of the ghosts, a boy a few years older than klaus with a blue face and purple hand marks on his throat laughs. "fat-ass," he sneers.

klaus doesn't cry.

he doesn't.

-

he only has five months left, and he's panicking. he doesn't know what do, and twelve hundred calories isn't working but anything less is probably dangerous, klaus knows that much.

but he can't ever face anyone while he still looks like _this._

eight, klaus decides, is a perfectly good number.

eight hundred calories it is.

-

it's not as easy as klaus wants it to be. it's hard work, not eating. much harder work than eating. but every time klaus thinks about finishing his plate at dinner, he imagines instead having the same arms as five, and then he feels sick, and he can't eat any more, even if he wants to.

so...

so.

it's just a thing.

-

klaus loses ten pounds, but he still can't see the difference. he's exactly as fat as before, so why is the scale lying to him?

he's only a few pounds away from his goal weight, though, which should be a lot better than whatever the hell this is.

klaus grows taller, and somedays's he can even look in a mirror and not hate what he sees with everything in his blood. he grows into his bones. he can see them now, sometimes.

it's a thing.

-

at the next weigh-in, klaus is two pounds under his goal. one hundred twenty-two pounds. it should be good enough, he should look different.

but he... doesn't.

he doesn't look different at all.

maybe it's just because one twenty-two isn't a multiple of four. yeah, that's it. one sixteen will be better.

he'll probably be able to wear all of allison's skirts by then, and maybe he'll even be able to do that and not feel like tearing off his skin.

it'll work.

it'll work.

it'll work.

it'll work.

there, four times. now nothing can go wrong.

-

(once again, klaus returns with his extravagant ability to completely misjudge the future.)

-

the thing about dead people is that they get worse the longer you spend with them. the other thing about them is that whatever decency they had as humans get yanked out the moment they realise that they don't have anyone to judge them anymore.

well, anyone besides klaus.

"god, you're so fat," says one of the girls one day, stick-figure arms crossing over her chest. "you should just starve yourself, fucking fatty." her face is all bitter, screwed up and everything, even though her lips are trembling and she looks like she might cry any minute.

"just go away," klaus mutters, back pressed against the headboard of his bed, having long since given up on sleep.

"fatty!" she yells again, louder, more insistent.

"leave the boy alone, annabell," an old lady says from the corner of the room. she's knitting, but the sweater never gets any longer. maybe she died while she was still trying to complete it. her knarled brown hands move in a comforting pattern, and she has a chain smokers rasp.

"what do you know, eugenia? you've barely been dead for a week! you haven't been here anywhere _near_ as long as i have!" annabell yells, snarl still firmly in place. her hair is thin and brittle, like pieces of straw. she's also dead.

but she's _so tiny._

"how did you get that skinny?" he asks, quiet, ashamed.

annabell looks at him, considering, raises an eyebrow, and then smiles brightly. she looks a bit happier, now, and the quiver in her lip is gone. some of the other ghost's are still screaming at him, but she sits down next to him, almost close enough to touch, and starts to talk.

"the first thing you have to do is stop eating when you don't need to..."

-

there is something about starvation that is easy. it's a much simpler thing than eating less because it requires you to do less. and yeah, the first time he does it is hard, and he only makes it eleven hours, but over time it just gets... easier.

and then he wakes up and for the first time, he's just not hungry. he sits in his bed, upright, and he smiles at annabell and tells her about it. she smiles back at him, a soft foreground to the backdrop of screaming and chaos and everything terrifying, and when she puts her hand next to his he gets the sense that she'd be holding it if she could.

-

he doesn't eat breakfast that morning.

-

or lunch.

-

or dinner.

-

or.

-

one day, when annabell is gone off to do something (she says she's visiting her brother, who is in his thirties now but still puts flowers at her grave every day, which makes klaus feel all achy because he can, with far too much vividity, imagine diego doing the same for him) and the ghosts are really, really loud, klaus cups his hands over his ears and his dad walks in.

he doesn't realize it at first, eyes screwed shut until the lights turn on and the red pierces his vision. klaus looks up at his father.

there is a split second where they lock eyes, and klaus can see dad's widen with the tiniest hint of surprise before his vision is blotted out by the big man with the bullet wound who keeps yelling at klaus (he says the dirtiest, most horrible things, about klaus but also about his sisters, which play in his head every time he looks at them to the point he can hardly stand to look at them at all).

the lights turn off, and klaus goes back to shaking.

-

then, a week later, there is the mausoleum.

he screams and cries until his throat is clogged, drags his nails across the wall until his fingers are bloody, and then gets his hair bloody by pressing his hands over his ears as hard as he can.

he's in there for twelve hours.

twelve is, klaus decides, a horrible number.

-

the first thing klaus does when he gets out is sleep.

not in his own room, he wouldn't be able to _survive _in his own room right now, but in ben's room. he doesn't even say anything, because ben is already up reading, just sinks bellow the covers, thousand-yard stare fixing onto the wall, and wraps his arms around his brother's waist.

ben starts to ask, almost, but klaus just has to mutter "please, don't" before he takes the hint and puts down the book, wrapping his brother up in a hug that lasts forever.

-

klaus doesn't eat for three days, after the mausoleum. it's not intentional, even, he just pretends to be sick to get out of training, lays down in the infirmary and digs his nails into his shoulders until the undersides of them have dried blood jammed beneath.

-

the day he gets out of the infirmary, he tries to distract everyone from the way he's feeling by putting on mom's heels and running down the steps. also, he yelled at annabell yesterday and he feels kind of bad about it, even though he still doesn't want to see her, so he hopes she's watching, and that she laughs.

then he trips because he's light-headed from not having eaten in upwards of seventy hours and there is a lot of pain and then nothing else.

-

when klaus wakes up, his jaw is sewn shut and the ghosts are all gone. mom tells him that he's being given a dose of oxycontin, to help with the pain. he feels light and drifty, freer than he has in as long as he can remember.

he can't talk, which sucks because klaus loves talking, but he also can't eat anything solid, which is awesome because klaus doesn't like eating. he looks, discretely as possible, at the nutrition label on the bottle he's been given. 200 calories per bottle.

cool. cool, cool, cool. he can work with that. just drink two every day.

mom wants him to drink more than that. he writes on a notepad that the drugs are curbing his appetite. which is somewhat true.

he doesn't know why the ghosts are gone until he gets off oxycontin and they come back. annabell is crying, and her voice sounds like a record scratch, shriller than it used to be and all wrong in a way that klaus doesn't think he can fix.

when the man with the bullet hole in his chest starts telling klaus about all the things he can still do without his mouth, that it's only the second-most useful part of him, klaus tells mom the pain is too bad and asks for another pill.

-

it's only two months before they start missions. his next weigh-in rounds out at one oh twelve. twelve is a bad number though, which means he has to go lower.

"you know what a great number is?" he asks ben, lying down on the floor, high off his ass.

"what?" ben's eyes dart up from the book he's reading, for the millionth time, like he keeps forgetting klaus is there until he speaks.

"eighty-eight. it's a good number. it's... it's like, twice as much as forty-four, which is an even better number, but it's like, _closer._" he imbues the final word with as much emotion as possible, desperate to convey something he doesn't quite understand yet to his brother.

"yeah, i guess it's good... why?" ben doesn't set his book down, exactly, he doesn't even close it, he just places it, still open, on his lap, hand holding it in place.

"i don't know," klaus responds, even though he does now, he knows well.

maybe eighty-eight can make him happy.

-

klaus is one hundred and four pounds when they do their first mission. he's itching for a smoke, at the moment, because it makes him a lot less hungry.

and klaus, these days, is _always _hungry.

the uniform he's wearing feels tight and revealing, and it's hugging all the places he doesn't want it to, and when they stand outside he feels like everyone can see every single piece of fat on his body.

when they get back home, he gets as drunk as he possibly can and locks himself in his room to try to forget what it felt like. he drinks vodka because beer has too many calories.

-

diego is the first person to ask him about it.

"klaus, a-are you sick?" he demands, with all the tact of a car slamming into a brick wall.

"what?" klaus is sitting on his bed, staring at the wall and contemplating if he should set his clothes drawer on fire, just to see if dad notices.

"you l-look really sk-sk-skinny, are you o-okay?"

_thanks, _klaus doesn't say, even though he wants to. _nice to know it's working._

"i didn't notice. just haven't been hungry lately."

"j-just pro-promise me you'll tell me if anyth-things wrong, okay?" klaus nods.

lying, klaus learns then, tastes like bitter almonds. like cyanide, if you know what you're doing.

-

they go on a lot of missions, all the time, and they do interviews and meet fans, which is the closest klaus has ever come to social interaction, not counting his siblings.

one of his fans invites him to smoke weed with them, and then he does, and it's not a weird experience so much as it is just an experience. klaus also ends up kissing the guy, so he guesses that that's just kind of a thing now.

eh, he's been weirder things than into guys. it's not that bad.

-

so, how it happens, is they're all trying to watch a movie during their thirty minutes of weekly free time. klaus is kind of high, because these days 'kind of high' is just his default state of being, and he's sitting in front of the tv with all his siblings. funnily enough, the only movie on is that one that klaus never finished watching, years ago, 'perfect body.' it's just started.

klaus mentions that he watched this part of the movie a while ago. none of the others say anything, but five gives him a suspicious look.

-

a few days later, right before he goes to sleep, five approaches him.

"you have an eating disorder," five says, immediately, bluntly, voice filled up with something that klaus has never heard from him before.

"what?" klaus stutters. "no i don't!" and he doesn't! eating disorders are like, throwing up your food after you eat it. klaus doesn't do that! he's just on an extreme diet, that's all.

"i remembered you saying that you watched that movie only a while before your weight started to drop dramatically, so i went back and watched the rest of it. the main character has anorexia nervosa. you display the same symptoms, so forgive me if i don't believe you."

klaus stumbles back from his brother, watching eyes flickering from klaus to notepad, klaus to notepad. 

"wha- i don't, i don't have an eating disorder! this is just a diet, _that's all!_" he says it with such force that it's almost believable. number five looks up at him, raises an eyebrow, and teleports to his side.

"okay then, if you don't have an eating disorder, eat all of your breakfast tomorrow." five looks rather smug about his words, but klaus doesn't know why.

"fine, i will!"

number five leaves, apparently satisfied. klaus has a panic attack on the bed and then smokes some weed to calm himself down. he can do this. he doesn't have an eating disorder, which means he can do this.

klaus wraps himself up in the blanket and shivers even though his room is seventy-nine degrees. he's probably just cold-blooded.

-

the next morning, klaus sits downstairs and breathes all of his calories lists out of his nose. he can do this.

he can do this.

he can do this.

he can do this.

there, four times. now nothing will go wrong.

(klaus should stop making predictions about the future.)

so he sits there, rolling a blunt under the table because five doesn't know about _this_ bad habit yet, and then mom places pancakes in front of him and he takes a bite. he doesn't process how many calories and carbs and sugars are in the bite, just focuses his mind on how delicious it is.

it almost works.

then, number five and dad have an argument, and five runs away, and klaus never sees him again.

this is what happens when he doesn't count his calories. this is all his fault, this is all his fault, if he wasn't such a fat ass then this wouldn't have happened and number five would still be here and klaus wouldn't have gained weight and and and-.

four times fourty-four equal one hundred seventy-six calories a day. it's more than enough.

-

klaus doesn't think he's wasting away, but the rest of his siblings seem to.

-

life doesn't really pass so much as fall down beside him as he walks by, playing a slideshow he doesn't remember creating. maybe he didn't create it at all.

-

one hundred pounds.

-

fourteen years old.

-

ninety-seven.

-

fifteen.

-

sixteen.

-

ninety-six.

he's still not happy with anything, but he doesn't think eighty-eight is within leaping distance.

-

eighty-four might be better because it has four in it.

-

ben is gone. there one day, disappeared the next. just vanishing into thin air.

klaus is the first of his siblings to move out.

-

he moves into the house of his current boyfriend, the one who slaps him upside the head when he doesn't listen and who chokes him in bed even though klaus doesn't like it. he never says he doesn't like it, though, because the guy's apartment is better than klaus can afford.

he packs his bags when the guy tries to sell him to his friends.

fuck that noise.

-

there is, in klaus's opinion, precisely one good thing about living on the streets; there is no food anywhere. the ghost of ben (which is a thing now, apparently, that ben sticks around whether klaus is high or not. klaus likes it because he missed ben more than he thought you could miss a person but dislikes it because it means ben is there for everything) keeps telling him to just loot a trashcan, and klaus babbles on about his pride, even though he thinks they both know the real reason.

he hooks up with a lot of people like the first boyfriend he stays with, people who hurt him and don't care about him but who give him drugs, which basically makes up for the other two. klaus gets drunk easily, even as he builds tolerance, which makes some people a lot happier than it should.

one time, klaus wakes up on somebodies floor, dazed and covered in something that, after a quick check, is decidedly not blood. he gets up, ignoring the way his head spins and how he nearly blacks out, and then he showers until he can't feel his skin anymore.

then he goes to diego's house.

-

confession: klaus does not have a plan for when he gets to diego's house. he knows where his brother lives only because ben leaves klaus alone some days to check on their other siblings. just when klaus is asleep, though. sometimes. occasionally.

rarely, after the time klaus almost got stabbed by a one-night-stand in his sleep.

so he knows diego lives in some shitty apartment downtown.

he climbs the stairs, counting them in groups.

they haven't seen each other in two years. klaus hesitates.

he lifts his fist.

he poises it above the door.

he remembers his brother's comfort, how he felt when klaus hugged him. remembers what diego smelled like.

wonders if its the same as its always been, or if something will be different, changed, shifted in a way klaus can't fix with anything, not even counting by four.

he stands, and he stands, and he stands with his fist resting against the door. it's three in the morning. diego is probably asleep. or out. or drinking with a girl or a boy at a bar somewhere. or maybe he's with that girl or boy right now, inside.

he doesn't want to ruin anything else.

he counts the steps on the way back down. four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-five.

it's only when klaus gets to the bottom step that he begins to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in like two days so it's total trash sorry lol. title is from the song bruno is orange, by hop along.
> 
> leave a comment or danny devito will come into your house and suck your blood.


End file.
